


The disco ball is the loneliest moon in orbit

by urbanfriendden



Category: Disco Elysium (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, CW: Liberalism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, No Sex, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:21:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22281769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/urbanfriendden/pseuds/urbanfriendden
Summary: Harrier DuBois just learned about the Pale and has a rough time interfacing with reality. An ultraliberal swindler abuses that existential unsteadiness.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 38





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is written in the style of Disco Elysium, meaning that during regular conversation, 'thoughts' interject and give their take on the matter. It's best to read it like a film script, with each high-lighted name representing a certain facet of Harrier's inner thoughts.
> 
> Why did I write this? Because Disco Elysium is about an alcohol-delusioned man who is desperate for meaning in the world. I personally missed a character in the game abusing that fact, so I wrote in an NPC doing just that. Also I wrote this because I thought it'd be funny.
> 
> Special shoutout to Bagel in the Disco Elysium Discord server for hooking me up with an early AO3 account!

“Officer? Are you okay?”

Lieutenant Kitsuragi’s voice is slightly concerned, but his eyebrows remain at their trusty, nonplussed bend. A face used to people, a plaque to dealing with the best the worst have to offer.

 **COMPOSURE** – You step away from the pier. A twitch reveals the lieutenant’s intent to save you, should you fall.  
**INTERFACING** – The existentially-challenged aren’t known for their smooth, flawless interfacing with the world around them. Especially not after learning too much about it.

“Kim, has reality always been Big Shit?” Revachol Citizen's Militia detective Harrier DuBois steadies himself on a nearby pylon. 

Kim’s glasses reflect the blurry outline of a boat, a Cor-de-Leite ’19. His eyes narrow at the woman standing on top of its deck.  
“Yes,” he exhales, scowl drifting toward Harrier. “It is generally known to be Big Shit. But I cannot say I am surprised at your reaction. In your, hm, unique condition, such a dosage must be hard to parse." His posture changes to that of a schoolteacher. “Hence my insistence of you not learning about the Pale.”

 **VOLITION** – You feel the nervous acid of knowing you wronged yourself. Morale takes a hit.  
**AUTHORITY** – Your lesson is being read. There is nothing you could have done about it.  
**LOGIC** – Well, he could have listened to the lieutenant’s advice.  
**AUTHORITY** – Two lessons apropos of you have been read. Don’t let this book of mistakes pile up.

The woman responsible for Harrier’s morpho-philosophical whiplash, Joyce L. Messier, waves a polite farewell at the detectives. Her grin reveals weaponised ivory. She gave the detective a ‘reality lowdown’; it felt like a Contact Mike-level throwdown.

 **PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT** – If you weren’t such a namby-pansy, you could punch this dumb concept in the face. Real tough ones can conceptualise faces, which they then can punch.

DuBois woke up not knowing a single goddamn thing, and he has been tenacious about learning one. A thing. Anything to set his mind to. He realised he was a raging feminist early on. And that the scent of apricot makes his skin form a chrysalis of grief. That’s two things. The third thing was the Pale, as explained by Joyce.

 **CONCEPTUALISATION** – In a nutshell, the Pale is non-matter which suspends matter. A fog that turns the real into abstraction. A car falling apart at the conceptual level. Slowly ‘losing’ its physics, metal turning into numbers locked out of a formula. Until there isn’t enough context left; we're past talking about ‘things’. The Pale is reality’s rust.  
**PAIN TRESHOLD** – And howdy holy shit did it feel bad to know this.  
**EMPATHY** – Like explaining winter’s approach to a newly-blossomed flower.  
**HALF-LIGHT** – We must fight. No winter will freeze our red-hot love for being.

Indeed, a staggering alcoholic can hardly deal with the harsh realities of shoelace-tying. The harsh meta-realities of the withering-away of such harsh realities is next-level shit. Harrier has been huffing magnesium to make the headache subside, but that’s assuming it’s his brain that’s hurting.

 **VOLITION** – Hardly anything to do about that, pal.

Kim’s careful touch shakes Harrier’s thoughts out of him like a gumball machine.

“Come on, officer, let’s get you to your hotel room. You need sleep. Not being conscious would resolve some of the issues you’re having.” The lieutenant leads the dullard’s arm around him, his orange bomber jacket soft and comfortable like a coffee house cushion. His shoulder harder than his physique would ever suggest.  
“Kim, that’s so relatable.” DuBois attempts a smile, forgets that he always wears the same smile, instead elects a pathetic thumbs-up with his free hand.  
“Well, I was a juvie cop for 15 years. I know relatable.”

* * *

**ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN** – “Spinning, spinning, baby. You’re on the dancefloor and you’re the disco ball. Everyone loves you for your shape and your personality now. The fog machine sputters and retches more of that sweet, disgusting party on the floor, diamonds dissolving around you. You’re spinning so much. There’s a misty, funky tornado happening in the club, no one’s going home.”  
**LIMBIC SYSTEM** – “But they want to… Legs are tired, livers are howling, and beds are better than the vacuous space you’ve become, Harry. Ohh, did you think gravity would work in your favour? That if you kept spinning, people would stay near you? All you’re doing is thicken the fog. Who are they dancing with? What do their bodies need? Where are their hands moving? It isn’t you. Anyone, anything, any drug’s a better exit."  
**ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN** – “Whatever royal delusion you’ve drunk yourself into, it’s not the kingdom of dance. You’re not a ruler, you’re hardly the jester. The disco ball is the loneliest moon in orbit. Wake up, Harry boy. You’re looking rather Pale.”

**WAKE UP.**

* * *

Harrier does so. A startled animal, he flees his bed in one swooping motion. His regret, pangs in his lower back, catches up with him.

“Damn this flesh suit,” he yammers like a puppy begging for a treat. “It is a garbage bag around a jellyfish! And fuck this soul! Fuck my soul!”

 **INLAND EMPIRE** – Vast and immense, like the Insulindian. Still filled with mines.

The stars of Revachol provide more light than its broken streetlights manage. Outside on the balcony, Harrier lights a cigarette. There, the image of a paunchy detective smoking. Wearing only greasy underwear and green crocodile-leather shoes, hairy potbelly squished against the railing. No one would enjoy the sight of him, but the city is too shy to complain. 

Back in his room, he gets dressed. He misses Kim, far away in sleep.  


**PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT** – Clear your mind, detective, a walk is in order.

 **ENDURANCE** – Night-time strolls are good for the blöödstream.

Revachol ought to be deserted, insular at this hour. Yet, the night always leads you down new alleyways. Pathways to strange encounters. In this one, the detective walks up to a vague milieu of mysticism. A wide cultural assortment of puppets, drawings, and charms displayed in the windows. Two door-mounted spotlights welcome the detective to the only store still open this late. 

‘The Pale Shop’.

 **ELECTROCHEMISTRY** – A nocturnal merchant can only mean one thing. Certain death (the little one) or certain death (drug-induced). Don’t miss this chance for either!  
**PERCEPTION (HEARING)** – The door opens with an electronic welcoming message, a recording of a woman’s voice. Her timbre and the accent suggest 'culturally insensitive.' 

* * *

Inside, a store clerk.

 **KATERSPEK, NOTED CHARLATAN** – A spindly, lily-white man wearing a milkmaid’s brim, tacky fingerless gloves, and a piece-of-string jacket adorned with many more tassels. He looks like a time traveller who for good reason wasn’t allowed to come back. Between the fidgeting and nervous tics, there is a salesman’s posture there.  
**CONCEPTUALISATION** – This man embodies the idea of a scam. The primeval swindle. The Ur-Hoax. A tassel-saturated windpipe that exudes lies instead of carbon-dioxide.  
**DRAMA** – We’ll chime in just this once, sire, as to keep the spotlight aimed at this man. But be warned: every sentence he spits will be a lie.

The store is cluttered and worthless. Perhaps to glamour over the lack of actual wares. Upon the walls, the detective notices a gallery’s worth of slipshod doodles. Emulated cave paintings. Strings of paper-cut people, but instead of holding hands they seem to be smearing on salves or injecting effervescent gases. Barely legible price listings, exorbitant of course, can also be made out.  
**VISUAL CALCULUS** – A false people’s history of drug use.

The clerk throws his arms open in welcome, tassels and woodstrings rattling wildly.  
“Welkam to de Paele Sjop, vriend!”

 **RHETORIC** – What the fuck.  
**HALF-LIGHT** – Kill him immediately. This is clearly not a man but a psychosomatic assault.  
**ENCYCLOPEDIA** – Judging from the accent, he might just be Oranjese.

Harrier’s mouth opens. It says: “What the fuck, I’m going to kill you.”  
“Heej, heej, heej! No need to get vaajolent, officur. I have a licunse. I am a legit bisnismen.” The man holds up what appears to be an official store permit, granted by the Coalition itself. No such thing exists in Revachol. He is only making things worse for himself, legally speaking.  
“Now det det’s settled, I ken tell you’re a man interested in the finer tings in lijf. And I so happen to sell every finer ting that de Paele has to offer.”

 **RHETORIC** – If his accent were any more thick, you could have it on toast.

“Hold on, you sell stuff from the Pale?”  
“Oh, jes! I sell Paele extrakt, beer brewed with Paele-infused watur. I even sell trinkets found deep within de Paele, transformed by its effekts.” With each product he gestures at an example.

Swirling, off-white liquid kept within an old-timey apothecary’s vial.  
**LOGIC** – To play up the mysticism.

An uncapped beer bottle, fuming mysteriously. It smells like undistilled alcohol poured over farmland.  
**ELECTROCHEMISTRY** – Not even I’m sure about this one. Stick to what you know, _inflagranti_.

An old pocket watch looking kaput in an entirely new way. Instead of the smooth, rounded metal surfaces of average pocket watches, this one seems to be stuck in a rough shellcase of raw ore. Its clockface is still intact, but the expression is blurred out, as if the time it tells cannot be accessed.  
**INLAND EMPIRE** – That’s how you feel on better days.

DuBois holds a vial, letting the glass imprint itself on his coarse fingers.

“How did you get all of this?”  
“Oh, you know, reizigers.”  
“Wait, what’s reyzikors?”  
“I said noffing like det.”  
“Raysicourse?”  
“Wat?”  
“Where did you get your stuff from, you piece of shit?”  
“Oh, reizigers. Dey are, uhm, people who trèvul. Trèvellurs.”  
“I’m sorry for calling you a piece of shit. I’m in a bad place and everything about you just infuriates me.”

 **SUGGESTION** – He looks somewhere between upset, terrified, and concerned. Why did you think it was a good idea to tell him this?  
**HALF-LIGHT** – Buddy, I’m glad you’re speaking your mind here. It’s good to let it all out. The world has showed itself to be fraying at the fringes and is creating all sorts of strange, late-stage apocalysms. This is nothing more than a pale-shimmer.  
**ENCYCLOPEDIA** – Again, nothing of the sort. He is not a flesh-given amalgamation of cosmic dread, he just happens to be Oranjese. There’s really no reason to treat him like this. You should probably talk to him like a normal person.  
**SAVOIR FAIRE** – A normal person selling entroponetic quackery in the middle of the goddamn night does not do 'normal conversation'. Keep it weird, keep it wavy, just stop terrifying him.

Detective Disaster coughs into his fist, in an attempt to clear the air. 

“I’m detective DuBois of the RCM. What are you doing selling entroponetic products in the middle of the night?”  
“You ken call me Katersprek. De reason I tjoose midnight is because det is when de experts are out. Normal people don’t know de value of de Paele, insted doing tings like listening to de raadio or preying to Doloris Deyi. But de experts, dey know.”  
“Wait, am I an expert?”  
“You are here now, so you must be.”

 **ENCYCLOPEDIA** – You ARE an expert insofar you know that medicinal usage of the Pale in any shape or form is pseudoscience. The experts he is talking about might just be the homeless, or twenty-something partygoers from Jamrock.  
**HALF-LIGHT** – Or late-stage apocalysms seeking to sustain their infernal hold on our reality, dissolving the universe’s last line of defence. το χάος έρχεται!

“Officur? Are you okay?”

Harrier has been staring at the clockface for a while now, eyes bugged while his instincts fight amongst themselves. It’s hard to focus on things like ‘conversation’ or ‘doing a convincing job at appearing human’ when your cognition is more beehive than brewery.

“Isn’t stuff made with the Pale pseudoscientific nonsense, though?”

The man’s posture breaks. He slams his palms on the table, knocking over some Palebrews. The gassy liquid escapes, evaporating coming in contact with the stuffy store air.

“I thought you were an **expert**. I was wrong. You are just a racist.”

The alleged racist stares at an invisible camera, looking like he’d just been shot by a gun called randomness. Officer down, call in backup! But be careful about the optics, there’s no systemic argument that can prove cops _aren’t_ racist!

 **LOGIC** – Don’t look at me, buddy. I can’t make sense of this without further questions. But then you’d have to engage such a mind in further conversation.  
Harrier swallows nervously, brave enough to pursue this line of questioning. Adam’s apple like a moving mountain.

“How is that racist? Isn’t that, like, established scientific fact?”  
Katerspek leans back dramatically. His sheer disbelief suggests, ‘Get thee a shovel, if thou wilst dig thy grave yet deeper.’  
“Just like how it is ‘scientific’ that immigrants have ‘genetically inferior skull pans’?”

 **RHETORIC** – He seems to be arguing that the Pale is commensurable with… immigrants? And therefore race science? Hook this guy up with Measurehead!  
**ENDURANCE** – The Pale is everywhere and feminine and also söcialist. Destroying ‘Traditiön’.

Harrier’s sideburns float like dried grass in a breeze as he shakes the invasive thoughts from his mind. But the curiosity remains, what the shitdamn fuck is this guy going on about?

“Uh… are you saying that because it’s everywhere?”  
“Yes! Like immigrants!”

 **RHETORIC** – Oohh buddy…  
**ENDURANCE** – Nö. Let him ẞpeak.  
**PERCEPTION (HEARING)** – Wait, where did his accent go?

“Wait, isn’t saying that the real racist thing?”  
“No. I think it’s good that the Pale is everywhere. It contributes to the economy and we work well together.”  
“Even though it’s responsible for the decomposition of matter and the separation of realities?”  
“So just because it’s different, it’s ‘destroying reality’?”  
“No, but I mean, the Pale is literally doing that.”  
“How can you be sure? Have you ever seen the Pale in person?”

 **PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT** – The Pale can be people? That means we can punch it.  
**CONCEPTUALISATION** – Perhaps this is why certain Semenese tribes believe that the Pale can offer immaculate conception. Could it be Humanity, before humanity?

“No, but I’d like to meet a Person of Pale.”

 **COMPOSURE** – There’s an abrupt shift in Katerspek’s posture. Surprise, maybe?  
**LOGIC** – He didn’t think this would work on you. And, perfectly honest, neither did I. What the hell.

“Jes, well, don’t we all? You were saying all dese racist tings and now you tjánge? I ken’t trust you. Maybe if you spent som time with the Pale, you woud realise det it is just like you and me. Immigrents to the great city of Revasjol! They deserve a place, one of mostly low-paying, unskilled labour and easily-surveyed apartment blocks. I want to open a Pale-themed restaurant next, to show the world how diverse it can be.”

 **SAVOIR FAIRE** – Open-minded and enterprising. You could learn a thing or two from this guy. Maybe three things if he can help you dodge state-enforced property theft.  
**ENDURANCE** – Revacholian fööd is good as it is. Müch butter and thick crusts, with white meat of bird or cattle. Put Pale in your food and it will turn you into a Man of Wö.  
**HALF-LIGHT** – Ποτέ δεν θα είναι πιο όμορφη από ό, τι είστε τώρα. Δεν θα είμαστε ποτέ ξανά εδώ.

The detective ponders the thoughts presented to him. He is too much of a radical feminist to be swayed by the fake threat of emasculation. Harrier 'Genderfluidity' DuBois, baby! He also cannot understand the third thought – strange, considering it’s coming from his within own cortexes. The first one, then, remains the only logical choice.

 **LOGIC** – It is logically sound. It is not, however, sane.

“I understand completely. Before now, I believed that the Pale was something to be feared. A phantom attacking tradition. But now I fully accept the premise that it is actually immigrants.”

 **RHETORIC** – HARRIER YOU DUMB FUCK

The professional salesman makes it clear that there is only one redemption left for detective DuBois. The man agrees: he must make amends, not just for his uninformed “palephobic” outbursts, but to save the RCM’s reputation of ethnic riskiness. The only way to do this, obviously, is to yell at people on the street to buy products from the Pale Shop. Because as we all know, there is no better medium that better foments socioeconomic acceptance than consumer goods.

This, of course, has Kim Kitsuragi stirring in his sleep. A quasi-nightmare, a vision of his partner internalising some inane babble to the point of an all-encompassing sense of justice. A giant Harrier DuBois head invades the sanctuary of sleep. It flaps its gums, baring that static expression, rationalising having to use more drugs.

_I’m getting kooky on this Palebrew, Kimothy. It’s beer laced with Pale. To prove I’m not down with racism._

The lieutenant wakes up screaming. It’s 6:22 AM, almost time to wake up. For some reason, he dreads the day to come.


	2. Chapter 2

“Officer, are you okay?”

Firm knuckles knocking on the door accompanied by a stern voice. For the past few days, Harrier had been up and ready to go – ready to intensely jog anywhere – at 7:30 AM, pointed. It’s 8:14 and lieutenant Kitsuragi still hasn’t seen him. Where was that furry moustache, those tired, red-burnt eyes cracking under the pressure of a permanent smile, that fashion sense bordering on kindergarten magazine collages? His not-quite-nightmare last night could have been nothing but an ill omen, a divine message: “your partner fell for some bullshit again.” 

Prophecy proven: the door’s still locked. Just like on their second day together, when the mention of ‘apricot empires’ made Harrier flee like a rabid wolfman back toward the hotel. Kim found him in his room. Barely hanging on to his underwear, cradling a broken record player as if it were some messianic figure. Howling a cappella Ostentatious Orchestrations, a werewolf whose only moon is a silver disco ball.

It takes two to tango, and Kim Kitsuragi is the walls of the Jericho discotheque. Too tired to deal with this much shit this early in the day, the lieutenant shifts into gear. Indeed, it is time to bring out 'The Eyebrow’. When he curves his left eyebrow to a precise 13° angle, he unlocks a deep, masculine timbre of respect and commission. All will beckon, all will yield to the authority of such intense, high-impact eyebrow action. 

Kim’s mouth opens like a missile bay. Weapons free, locked and loaded. Fox two.

“Detective, you will perform your duties today, starting with opening the door.”

Immediately, the door swings open (DuBois is standing at the far end of the room? Did Kim convince the door to open?). The disaster detective stands like an animal in headlights, sideburns frazzled like hairy caterpillars. He’s already fully dressed, though his RCM jacket has been… customised, some might say upgraded, more will say turned to shit, with an assortment of coloured tassels.

“There you are, detective. Are you ready to resume our investigation?”

Harrier’s smile creaks as he moves his teeth for speech. It looks mechanical and forced, completely foreign to social interaction.  
**SUGGESTION** – Just say that, yes, you are ready. Don’t explain yourself, that isn’t what the lieutenant is compelling you to do here. He just wants you to do your job. No need to bring up your newfound ideological project of pale-acceptance.  
**AUTHORITY** – It cannot be done. The eyebrow has already been fully cocked. The commune has fallen. Unconditional surrender, now.

“Hello lieutenant, I couldn’t be there sooner because I was thinking about how the pale is immigrants and all of us need to accept it, or else we’ll be racist.”

Kim’s hands perform a one-two combo of removing his glasses and pinching, no, vice-locking the bridge of his nose.  
“I pray that I just misheard you, officer. And no, that is not an invitation to repeat yourself. Are you ready to resume the investigation?”

 **COMPOSURE** – The Eyebrow remains, and so, you remain enthralled… Alas, lieutenant, you double-edged sword…

“I’ll repeat myself because I just feel so open around you, Kimothy. I think the Pale is actually a form of immigration. As Dolorians, we should be giving it job opportunities like kitchen helps or bellboys. Drive them into badly-maintained social housing. We should also represent it through stereotypical, essentialist roles in fiction to ease the readers into being familiar with the encroaching wave. An expert convinced me of all of this.”

 **EMPATHY** – The lieutenant probably already thought you were neurotic and unstable, demonstrably ill-fitted for police work. But now you ticked the ‘racism’ box. That’s a personal slight to him.  
**RHETORIC** – Harry, this cannot be pressed enough. Racism makes people dislike you. It’s bad to do.  
**ENDURANCE** – I prefer ‘träditionalism.’  
**RHETORIC** – I prefer it if you shut the fuck up.

The Eyebrow recedes like the ocean, the wave moving beyond its usual, nonplussed eb. No tide of anger, shock, or even exasperation. It breathes salty. The exclusive thing that never fails to get to Harrier: disappointment.

 **INLAND EMPIRE** – She was disappointed with you, too, before you became a cop.

“I see I will be working alone today, detective. Sort yourself out in the meantime.” Kim Kitsuragi spins on his heel, one hand firmly gripping the other’s wrist, and walks off.

 **INLAND EMPIRE** – Echoes of wasted footprints.  
**PAIN THRESHOLD** – OOOOOGHHHHH… OOF… UHNNNNN… BLARGH…  
**VOLITION** – Deep breaths. Deeeeep breaths, Harry.

Harrier DuBois crumples to the floor like a paper ball missing the trash bin. There is only the realisation that that he fucked up. Worse: he fucked up with Kim, elected representative of the concept of patience. Yet somehow, as is common for the existentially-challenged, he isn’t sure why that is.

“What did I do…? I just want to be good…” He cries.

 **RHETORIC** – It’s probably because you sound like a demented racist right now. But it’s been well established that you won’t be listening to me.

All grows dark…

* * *

**ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN** – You’re a great dancer. You’re a real crowd-pleaser. She didn’t leave you because you lacked the footwork.  
**THE SPINAL CORD** – Nothing wrong here.  
**LIMBIC SYSTEM** – _Scratch on the moon like a familiar smile, stained on my mind…_

In the ill-maintained municipality of his neurosis, Harrier DuBois stands before a threefold court. His brain, the judge. His limbic system, the jury. His spinal cord, his sweet dance moves. He pleads not guilty – he’s never been wrong. He’s never wronged anyone.

_I’m not a bad person. Everyone just keeps leaving me._

**ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN** – That’s right, baby. You’re a one-track mind. Solve the mystery. Help the people. Save the world. Use your hands to really get in there. That’s how you got those three notches on your badge, Harry. That’s the way, isn’t it? There’s no error in that way. Keep on jogging with those big legs. You never get tired, no matter the distance. You get off on creating that distance.  
**LIMBIC SYSTEM** – No one’s pleased with you anymore, Harry. You’re not a one-man show, you’re an ugly drunk at karaoke. Everyone but you can see that you never take a look at yourself. The glimmer of disco in your eye, that big dream you chase, that bloated face reflected in the moon, it’s just moving away from people. No one wants to stay around someone who only goes away.

_I am a trailblazer of disaster and I cannot stop jogging._

**THE SPINAL CORD** – Dances have routines, my man. Retrace your steps. Refine your movements. Disco isn’t going anywhere, you just need to match your partner.

****

WAKE UP AND THINK OF KIM.

****

**  
**

* * *

A certain detective rises from the floor, determined to take on the extremely hostile threat of ‘personal responsibility’.

 _Think, Harrier_ , thinks Harrier. Definitely the first time he’s ever prompted himself that. _You’re a detective. You can solve the mystery of being racist. You can think of ways to not be._

 **VOLITION** – _Tout le monde, rassemblez_! He’s getting coherent again!  
**LOGIC** – They said it couldn’t be done…  
**PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT** – ALL HANDS ON DECK, TROOPERS. WE GOT ONE SHOT BEFORE WE LOSE HIM FOREVER.  
**CONCEPTUALISATION** – A miracle of neural activity. A marvel of the human mind matched only by the entroponeticist who predicted the Pale’s anti-structure.

Time freezes, the world sepia-toned. Harrier’s racing mind slows to a screeching halt, trying out this allegedly useful ‘thinking’. 

_The Pale’s what now?_

**VOLITION** – He’s doing it. Inner dialogue. We might even live to see self-reflection happening.  
**ENCYCLOPEDIA** – ‘Anti-structure’ was a term coined by entroponeticist Marq-Sophia-Maria Lagrundi-Stellman. In a project spanning three decades of experimental research, she applied metalinguistic theory to old navigator logs. In their Pale-infused delusions, these sailors wrote down (and presumably uttered) bizarre and incomprehensible strings of phrases, words, and phonemes. She found that these would increase in strangeness the longer the journey went on.  
**EMPATHY** – How different your grandmother tells the same stories, four years into Alzheimer’s.  
**ENCYCLOPEDIA** – Lagrundi-Stellman’s findings were harrowing. Her widely-accepted model traces the process by which the Pale dissimilates philosophical structure. Linguistic programming, thought patterns, humanity’s self-cognitivism. The Pale’s primary ‘function’ , she argued, was not to destroy reality itself. Rather, it crosses out the rulebook. The impossibility to be a subject. No one gets to play.  
**AUTHORITY** – All that remains is a child’s fear in the dark. Not of it. Within it.

Harrier strokes his beard. It surprisingly makes a lot of sense – and it corroborates what Joyce had explained to him. But one question keeps scratching at his gray matter:  
_What if that child is a **racist** child, though?_

 **PAIN TRESHOLD** – Harry, maybe you’re just scared of being called racist?  
**ENCYCLOPEDIA** \- It's not uncommon for people to turn to obscurantist or extremist worldviews if they have been psychologically compromised. **VOLITION** – Knowing that there’s this ocean of unmaking out there while going through a hecatoncheir of a hangover, of fucking course you have a haemorrhage of intelligence.  
**PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT** – Coach knows this very well: you need something to latch on to. Something closer that doesn’t seem so far removed from you. Cradling a lie does mean it’s in punching range.

The detective’s heart twinges. If he hadn’t jogged, he might still be with...

 **HALF-LIGHT** – παύση! The Unbinding Gray has already caused a lapse in your judgment once. You must return to the primogenitor and demand of her a resolution. Confront her, _The Boat Wendigo._  
**LOGIC** \- Joyce Messier did sweep the rug out from under your feet. She could be the one to ground you again.

* * *

The closer one stands to Revachol’s waters, the more it smells like history. A great pungency that mixes the saline ocean with the sweat of the city’s many lives. Those that worked, that fought, that died here, every grain of human salt that is drowned beneath the waves. At the waterfront, the Revolution can still be sensed. Every suicide following its failure can still be tasted.

It’s hard to breathe at the waterfront, when each breath you take could have been the last one given.

On her Cor-de-Leite ’19, Joyce Messier stands and fills her lungs, satisfaction on her face. She is statuesque: gray-coloured in face and hair, her clothes reminiscent of old monarchies. Sent here as a strikebreaker, but appearing as so much more, she was the one that informed Harrier about everything. Every. Thing. Her ease, tone, and intelligence came across as a grim obsession with reality, or rather, with its end.

The lost soul returns to its psychopomp. Harrier holds a tassel in front of his nose to block out the morbid ocean stench, to no avail. The tassels he got from Katersprek have that distinct Oranjese aroma to them: a publicly urinated street. Now it smells like carnival with rotting corpses.

“Detective, you’re back. Did you manage to retrieve your badge yet?” Her eyes trail over Harrier.

 **ELECTROCHEMISTRY** – She’s digging the tassels, my man. Women love a good tassel.

“Actually, I’m not here to discuss the murder case or the excellence of my fashion sense. I have some questions for you about the Pale.”  
“Of course you do. Entroponetic amnesia is often paired with self-destructive bouts of curiosity.”

 **LOGIC** – Though pale-induced in a liberal sense, you can’t have entroponetic amnesia. You haven’t travelled through the Pale recently.

“I need to know if being afraid of the Pale is…”  
“Is what?” She raises an eyebrow.

 **SUGGESTION** – Do not say ‘racist’. Say ‘normal’. For the love of everything, say that.

“…rrrraaccii… nnooo… rac, is it nooormmmaallll?” The detective seems exquisitely pleased with that. Joyce is visibly perturbed.

 **RHETORIC** – I won’t even ask what in the hell that was. Just make sure she knows that wasn’t a stroke. 

“And before you ask, Joyce, I didn’t just have a stroke. I am completely alright. I speak like that all the time. In fact, that is how I speak when I’m free of strokes.” DuBois whispers, beneath his breath, “nice save.”  
“I see. Well, that’s good to hear. If I succeeded in understanding you correctly, you wanted to know if it was normal to fear the Pale. People generally do not find it difficult to hold an opinion of reality’s undoing.”

 **AUTHORITY** – You need an authority on the matter. You are not weak for doing so.  
**EMPATHY** – It’s not that she doesn’t want to act as a guide. It’s that her guidance comes at the cost of her respect for the police.  
**ESPRIT DE CORPS** – Somewhere along the 8/81 on an especially rainy day, a traffic jam accumulates before the wreckage of a tipped-over eighteen wheeler. Officer Leclerc is there with junior Salamonde. The trucker, who barely got out alive, explains how this could have happened. He's frazzled and slow, eyes dull from a hard life.  
**ESPRIT DE CORPS** – A day before, patrol officer Nguyen is at the end of her shift and her mind is already thinking about kissing her wife when she is suddenly interrupted by a dispatch call from HQ. She has to check a series of road signs on the 8/81 for spelling mistakes. The 43 signs in question are all in perfect grammatical and stylistic condition, though a bad stroke of paint stands out on one of them. “Turn, right here”. Could look like a comma, but there’s an arrow right above it. Nothing to get worked up over.  
**ESPRIT DE CORPS** – “So, what you’re saying,” Salamonde asks the trucker, “is that you just did what the sign told you?” The trucker looks up, lips quivering, “It said “Turn, right here”, didn’t it?”

“It’s normal to fear the end, detective DuBois. There is no organised force capable of stopping that which causes nothingness.”

 **SAVOIR FAIRE** – Wait, Katerspek told you that the Pale causes all sorts of things. It just needs firm integration policies and be taught how the civilised nations do it.  
**ENDURANCE** – Such as cööking without spices, and drinking pure Revachol brëws. No Palebrëws.

Harrier clears a swallowing motion.  
“It can’t be… uh, integrated?”  
Joyce laughs in shrilly amusement, a high wave crashes against her boat.  
“Integrated? Darling, are we talking about immigrants or the all-consuming chaos?”  
“…both?”

She stifles a last chuckle with her expensive sleeve.  
“You know my stance on politics, detective. I think transnational labourers are principally necessary to maintain capital’s continuous generation. Their exploitation serves a grand, awesome goal. And for that reason I whole-heartedly welcome them to the vague categories of humanity.” The wind picks up, the smell is overwhelming. “The Pale is a force that cannot serve capital. It is not ‘immigrants’, it is not human. It is a final, unstoppable enemy.”

 **COMPOSURE** – Her shoulders are tremoring. Talking about this unnerved her.  
**RHETORIC** – Admitting that capital has its own force of reaction, one that can exist outside of its commodifying tendrils, is the same as admitting defeat. It is admitting that it’s useless to try any further.  
**LOGIC** – And yet, capital does not stop. It cannot stop itself.  
**HALF-LIGHT** – All of the world swims within the eye of בהמות. Its tears will eradicate even the most eternal tyrant.

“So, what you’re saying is that immigrants and the Pale are two separate entities?”  
“Spot on, officer DuBois. I don’t know why you suspected it to begin with. It sounds like something that awfully racist lorry driver would come up with. But, I am glad to have helped you take a further step into the known, precarious world. Now, what can I do for you?”  
Harrier is honest: “Not really. I am, alas, a fucking idiot.” Joyce nods, imperceptibly, cutting the wind with her razor jaw.

* * *

As he steps away from the docks, the detective tears and claws at the tassels he carefully stuck to his uniform. 251,14 réal wasted – all that sweet tare money, gone. Measurehead was right. There is such a thing as too much tassel.  
His legs run hot with the undeniable desire for release. DuBois begins his signature jogging, turning it into a sprint, shifting it into the mad dash of a lifetime.

“I AM A TRAILBLAZER OF DISASTER! I CANNOT BE STOPPED!”

He runs like a man possessed to yesterday’s alleyway. His age catches up with him halfway.

“All… I want… is… to close… the distance…”

He slams his fist against the window. _'The Pale Shop is closed. Thank you for your patronage.'_

“Between… me and… me and…”  
“Officer, are you okay?”  
“KIM!”

Lieutenant Kitsuragi stands at the entrance of the alleyway, his arms folded behind his back. His head eclipses the morning sun behind him – there is light and it is He. 

Harrier slumps to the ground. He has jogged enough for a lifetime.

“I saw you running this way. I assumed you were chasing a suspect. It appears, not so much.” Kim walks over to the detective with calm, precise steps and extends a hand. Harrier feels relief wash away all his anxiety and fear as he clasps it. Even through the leather, the lieutenant’s grip feels like a reassurance. A strong, dependable thing. Harrier can’t hold back his tears, his big chubby cheeks useless as dams.

“Kim… I’m uh, I’m sorry I said all that this morning. The Pale is, well, it’s not immigrants.”

He just stares at him, eyebrowing ‘go on’.

Harrier explains his existential delirium, his chance encounter with Katersprek, his sobering conversation with Joyce just now. Everything gushes out, snivelling.  
"Not understanding what a Pale is, only being left with the sense that everyone is going to end up alone. Intensely, universally alone. Just like me. I don't want that for the world. Reality's already left me and I needed something to bring me back. It just had to be racism, didn't it? I'm a fuck-up. I want to beg you that this isn't me, but this is me being scared of it all. I just want to know I'm doing a good job. I just want to jog alongside you forever, Kim."

Lieutenant Kitsuragi, of course, has only known detective Dubois for 3 days, so this is crossing so many personal boundaries. But, there is a sense of relief in him as well. The idea, the reason he chose to become a cop: to offer help to those who lost control. The Eyebrow twitches, as if confirming his supreme sense of authority and duty. All he can offer in response is, “I dreamt you were a giant floating head that drank palebrews in order to convince me you were not down with racism.”

 **VOLITION** – Sounds like you.

“That does sound like me, I’ll admit.”  
“Yes, well, I hope you have learned your lesson by now. You are a police officer dealing with a very serious medical condition. There are people who want to make use of you and your power. I understand that you are in a perennial state of soul-searching, so you latch onto ideas such as _palephobia_ or _Raphaël Ambrosius Cousteau_. You are seeking answers when you have no questions. You want to find yourself when you have no one to look out for you.”

The lieutenant sighs and readjusts his glasses.

“But for the time being,” there is a simper of a smile there, “you have me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Cheers, readers! 
> 
> Part 2 and the stunning conclusion to Harrier's newfound ideological bender, here now.
> 
> To any Dutch people offended by this: lekker voor je.


End file.
